Goldfarb, Brian

Bio: Goldfarb is a digital media artist, curator, and educator. His research and visual media production focuses on media studies and contemporary visual and digital culture. His book, Visual Pedagogy: Media cultures in and beyond the Classroom, (Duke University Press, 2002), considers how media technologies were used in the second half of the 20th century to advance a model of pedagogy across the arts, education, and postcolonial politics in the United States and globally. Goldfarb’s digital art projects have been exhibited nationally, internationally, and on the Web. “Ocular Convergence,” an interactive, fictional, and critical examination of digital prosthetics for enhancing vision, has traveled to museums throughout the US and to Mexico City, Calgary, Paris and Johannesburg. Goldfarb was curator of education at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in NYC from 1994-7 where he organized “alt.youth.media” (Fall 1996), an exhibition of computer art, video, and popular print media (zines) by and for youth.

Research: Goldfarb’s current research project, 'Sense Ability: Fragments on Media Pedagogy, Digital Prosthetics and Assistive Technology' explores the roles of visual culture and technology in shaping the concept of disability and in the development of techniques for assessing and supporting disabilities relating to the senses and communication. Photography, the phonograph, video, digital imaging, digital audio and other emerging computer-based media have shaped the understanding and treatment of conditions in which sight, speech, hearing, and touch are impaired. 'Sense Ability' considers the role of visual culture, and these technologies in particular, in the emergence of sensory disability as a concept, and in the development of techniques for aiding and augmenting physical and sensory abilities since the late 19th century. The final form of the project will include both book and multimedia components.

A UCSD/UCI PARTNERSHIP
> California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology Contact Us